So You Think You Can Agile?

This content is syndicated from Agile Development Blog: Scaling Software Agility by Nat Tanner. To view the original post in full, click here.

Your corporate organisation has just publicly declared it’s “agile,” but what does that really mean?

Since the Australian Prime Minister announced, "The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile," we assume he is referring to our role as an agile society and how corporations can enact that change. His proclamation seems to have spurred a great deal of movement by large corporates to respond in their shareholder statements to meet that call to action.

Moving toward business agility means significantly changing the way we work, the way we approach our roles and the way in which, as knowledge workers, we all interact.

In our world, we define business agility as:

The ability of an enterprise to sense and respond to change quickly and confidently—and as a matter of everyday business.

Let’s imagine we take the “a” word out of the corporate statements. Could these ASX 100 listed organisations state that they not only merely respond to change but are sensing (innovating, hypothesising and learning) and creating (experimenting, testing, learning some more)? Once they've evaluated that part of the statement, can they then really lay claim that they do all of these things quickly and confidently?

Agility is a Journey

When considering the organisational impact of this definition, the task ahead for many is daunting. But moving your organisation toward business agility is a journey. You not only need to provide clear executive leadership but make and meet your commitments throughout your continuous improvement effort.

“MIT Sloan reports that agility shows up on both the top and bottom line, with Agile firms growing revenue 37% faster and generating 30% higher profit.”*

In a recent SMH article, nine large Australian enterprises stated that they are adopting more lean and agile organisational and operational business models. All are profitable or have seen significant profit growth in the previous 12 months. Does that mean we can attribute part of their success to becoming or being more agile? We also need to understand how they are sustaining and improving agility, and building an ongoing culture of learning.

Many of the organisations we work with have great team-level IT execution and are now more concerned with how they align their capacity to build the right things (versus building things right) to their business needs over a longer time horizon. They’ve observed some small wins around productivity but are now looking for those larger organisational gains that relate back to the MIT Sloan metric I shared above.

Have they truly taken the learnings from team-level agile up into programs and beyond into their portfolio and investment strategies? Or should we say, are their customers realising value, continuing to engage with these enterprises and paying it forward? A big challenge lies in understanding the goal for change and having the right organisational support to implement it. Then, you need to strive for some level of consistency and repeatability whilst still respecting the definition of agility. Team-level agile is a starting point for many, but realising big change requires consistent commitment across the enterprise.

Sustain Change With an Agile Approach

You don’t change an entire organisation overnight. Once you’ve identified clear leadership and compelling goals for your organisation, you need to take an agile approach—small but committed steps with open communication and feedback loops at each step of the journey. Ensure that you have a well supported executive leadership team that owns the sustainable change and helps steer change across the business. It all requires a combination of education at all levels, a clear roadmap for change and coordinated coaching, facilitation and change management.

I often reflect on how the agile community (the agile of the Agile Manifesto, complete with values, principles, etc.) supports or even contradicts this theme. There is a need for some semblance of consistency for these large enterprises—oh no, did I just tell you we need a framework? How very unagile of you!—a topic for another time perhaps.

The interesting thing here is that everyone in the market—customers, communities, consultants, vendors and partners—wants the same outcome. Improving the way organisations work to ultimately enhance our way of life as a society: eliminating waste and responding to change quickly and confidently (well, at least that’s what my team and I want).

So, one can only live hoping that’s why we're all here—to continue toward autonomy, mastery and purpose and in turn help enterprises do the same. We all want to embrace, educate and coach great outcomes for the people who work in these enterprises. Who doesn’t want to get up and be excited about the day of work ahead and help people improve their capabilities to ultimately create a better society?

It’s obvious we have a great opportunity ahead of us to perhaps even leapfrog other countries with agility. To learn from their failures (failing fast and learning is good, BTW) and reconnect Australia as a place of free thinking and collaborative learning toward a better, more agile society. As John F. Kennedy once said about improving economic reform, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” If we all pull together, we can help our enterprises and our government become more agile, increase our economic impact, grow and develop better talent and truly declare that yes, Australia is the agile land down under!

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“Kelly revolutionised the way our digital department operated. A true advocate of agile principles, he quickly improved internal communication within our teams and our internal clients by aligning our business and creating a much enhanced sense of transparency in the decisions the business was making. Kelly also introduced a higher sense of empowerment to the development teams...”

PETER SILVA-JANKOWSKIIPC MEDIA

“Kelly’s a leading program director with the ability to take charge from day one and keep strong momentum at both a program and project level driving prioritisation, resourcing and budgeting agendas. Kelly operates with an easy-going style and possesses a strong facilitation skill set. From my 5 months experience working with Kelly, I would recommend Kelly to program manage large scale, complex, cross company change programs both from a business and IT perspective.”

LUKE SHARKEY /STRATEGY & IMPLEMENTATION LEADERSUNCORP

“Kelly is an extremely talented and visionary leader. As such he manages to inspire all around him to achieve their best. He is passionate about agile and has a wealth of experience to bring to bear in this area. If you're 'lucky' he might even tell you all about his agile blog. Above all this, Kelly is great fun to work with. He is always relaxed and never gets stressed - and trust me, he had plenty of opportunity here! If you get the chance to work with Kelly, don't pass it up.”

GILES BENTLEY, DEVELOPMENT & OPERATIONS DIRECTORTIME INC

“Kelly is an Agile heavy-weight. He came in to assess my multi-million $ Agile development program which wasn’t delivering the right throughput. He interviewed most of the team and made some key recommendations that, when implemented, showed immediate results. I couldn’t ask for more than that except he’s a really nice guy as well.”

DAN PULHAM, DIGITAL DIRECTORTELSTRA

“Kelly and I worked together on a very large project trying to secure a new Insurer client. Kelly had fantastic commercial awareness as well as his technical expertise. Without him I would never had secured this client so I owe a lot to him. He is also a really great guy!”

GINA MILLARDGLASS'S INFORMATION SERVICES

“Kelly came to the department and has really made a huge impact on how the department communicates, collaborates and generally gets things done. We were already developing in an agile way, but Kelly has brought us even more into alignment with agile and scrum best practices, being eager to share information and willing to work with us to change our processes rather than dictate how things must be done. He is highly knowledgable about agile development (as his active blog proves) but his blog won't show what a friendly and knowledgeable guy he is. I highly recommend Kelly to anyone looking for a CTO or a seminar on agile/scrum practices - you won't be disappointed!”

ANDY JEFFRIES/TECHNICAL LEADIPC MEDIA

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HANNAH JOYCEGLASS'S INFORMATION SERVICES

“Kelly was engaged as a Program Director on a complex business and technology transformation program for Suncorp Commercial Insurance. Kelly drew on his key capabilities and depth of experience to bring together disparate parties in a harmonised way, ensuring the initiate and concept phases of the program were understood and well formulated. Excellent outcome in a very short time frame. ”

BRUCE WEIR/EGMSUNCORP

“I worked with Kelly on many projects at IPC and I was always impressed with his approach to all of them, always ensuring the most commercially viable route was taken. He is great at managing relationships and it was always a pleasure working with him.”

BEATRIZ MONTOYA/CONSUMER MARKETING DIRECTORIPC MEDIA

“I worked with Kelly whilst at Thoughtworks and found him to be a most inspiring individual, his common-sense approach coupled with a deep understanding of Agile and business makes him an invaluable asset to any organisation. I can't recommend Kelly enough.”

PETER THATCHER, SENIOR ACCOUNT DIRECTORThoughtWorks

“Kelly was a brilliant CTO and a great support to me in the time we worked together. I owe Kelly a great deal in terms of direction and how to get things done under sometimes difficult circumstances. Thanks Kelly.”